In My Words

Age 5

ONCE UPON A TIME there were fields of prairie grass and wooded creeks still clinging to the fringes of our North Dallas neighborhood. A variety of critters were among the local fauna; chaparral, horny toads, cotton tails, possums and raccoons, dove and quail, mockingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, grackles and sparrows, toads, frogs and lizards, garter snakes and the occasional cotton mouth water moccasin. When I was a boy, hunting, fishing and exploring came with the territory. On hot summer days our ragged band would parade like Lords of the Fly Kingdom with our bows, bamboo spears and BB guns down to McCraw's farmstead, or along Bachman creek all the way to chalk hill in Bluff View (no more than a mile) where we smoked cigarettes and gigged frogs. On one such outing I shot a lizard out of a tree with my bow and arrow. Bad for my karma maybe, but it was a good shot. I once shot a rabbit too and have never shot another. I did catch the granddaddy catfish lurking in the deep pool down at the dam, but I don’t remember if my mother cooked it. Another senseless murder no doubt.

Way Back Then

Dallas skyline in the 50s. A small town on the prairie.

A spur of the Cotton Belt Railroad ran through Dallas and went right past our homes way back then. We would crawl all over the box cars left on the siding and come home to face the music with rust covered hands and smudged blue jeans. Today that right of way is the North Dallas tollway connecting the suburbs to downtown. It is far more dangerous driving on the tollway than climbing on the boxcars for which we were routinely admonished. In those days, semi-trucks rumbled along Northwest Highway, just a block away from us. It was the only east-west route through north Dallas then. On summer evenings, we’d bowl for the big rigs with the huge green ‘horse apples’ from a scraggly grove of bois d’arc trees. We’d listen for the approaching engine, hurl the apple, wait for the pop when it exploded under the passing tires and run for cover in the night. We swam in the creek defying the moccasins and snapping turtles, played scrub baseball in an empty corner lot, rode our Schwinn bikes to Longfellow Elementary and bought cinnamon flavored tooth picks in little glassine bags at the Southland IceHouse right across from our school. It was perhaps the first 7-11 on the planet.

Urban sprawl would soon begin to reshape the fallowed farmlands just to our north, transforming them into middle class subdivisions with curbed streets and sidewalks, strip centers and new schools and high rises, freeways, apartment complexes and regional malls. This kept on going for the next quarter of a century and by then metro-Dallas reached almost half way to the Red River and all the way to Ft. Worth.

I got my first kiss playing spin the bottle. Her name was Nancy. Or was it Louise who lived down the street?

She loves you...yeah, yeah, yeah...

In 1963, when I was 14, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and other British bands dramatically transformed our insular little world of KLIF-AM radio and American Band Stand. It was only rock n’ roll (actually southern delta blues repackaged under the Union Jack label) but we liked it! You think Mick looks small today, you should have seen him on that tiny stage in Memorial Auditorium, dancing and prancing in front of three puny amps alongside Charlie’s drum kit with Keith and Bryan and Bill bravely bashing away, under a wimpy rack of spotlights. But Mick could strut that stage like A Little Red Rooster! Little did we suspect that Lee Harvey Oswald was about to put Dallas in a much brighter spotlight on the world stage.

Big Tex at the State Fair, right next to the Cotton Bowl every October.

I grew up when the Dallas Cowboys and Dallas Texans were both vying for bragging rights to who was the biggest loser in football. The State Fair of Texas and the Cotton Bowl were a big deal each fall. Halloween birthday parties were much anticipated events on my personal calendar. It never snowed on Christmas when I was a boy. Oh, it would snow in Dallas, but more likely it would ice. We would stand in the front yard and watch the approching line of slate blue clouds blowing in from Oklahoma, the wind would whip up and the temperature could fall forty or fifty degrees in under an hour. Then would come the rain, and then the sleet and then the real fun would begin. Down would come the sleds from the attic and down the street we would march to the big houses above the creek, with their long curving driveways now sheets of ice. We broke sleds. Some broke bones. We rarely broke with that tradition. Until we outgrew our childhood thrills.

My Roots

Granny and Grandpa Smedes, Southern comfort.

My family traditions were a blending of southern hospitality on my mother’s side and the Celtic heritage of my father. Consequently, with my family there was always a healthy diet of historical context and influence. All my life I have cut with my right hand and forked with my left, a hold-over from the English mead halls of the dark ages when that same knife was also used for killing, and if need be at dinner.

My maternal Granny (Anna Aday) and Grandpa (Kenneth Smedes) came from Alabama and Mississippi respectively; both with lingering memories about the Civil War. When their homes were being evacuated, the Aday women sewed the family silver to their hoopskirts, to hide it from the Yankee soldiers who were about to burn the rest of their worldly possessions to the ground. Granny had retained such an heirloom. It was a dented silver and cut crystal salt shaker. A Yankee soldier handed it back to her Aunt Olive (then a child) when it fell from its hiding place underneath her skirt. Speaking of skirts, Granny told us she never wore a store bought dress growing up. Hers were all handmade of fine French fabrics. Grandpa's grandfather was William Crosby Smedes, an attorney and President of the Southern Railroad of Mississippi, a prime target for President Lincoln during the Civil War. W.C. Smedes made his home at Smedes Station in Vicksburg and was a member of Mississippi's Secession Convention. But despite their privileged upbringing, Granny and Grandpa were as 'umble as apple pie and as sweet as Southern Comfort.

One bright and warm September day in 1961, Granny and Grandpa showed up unexpectedly on our doorstep. They were fleeing from their homestead down on Dickinson Bayou (near Texas City) in the face of a hurricane named Carla. They had ridden out many hurricanes over the years, but Carla was one mean bitch. She was the most powerful hurricane to make landfall on the Texas coast in the 20th century and second only in recorded history to the one that destroyed Indianola (TX) in 1886. Granny had told me there was a big storm coming the summer before Carla roared out of the Gulf. (Granny knew things like that.) Carla spared their home but not the boats seeking shelter in the bayou.

Bayou Buckaroos.

My older brother Ken and I loved the bayou property. We would shoot at fiddler crabs in the mud flats (maybe a bird now and then in the fig bushes) and fish for croakers and crab for the blue shells. Granny caught the flounders because she was patient. We never caught the big gar that kept taking our crab bait. Once it snapped the wire used for the noose intended to snare its bill. It got away clean with a hunk of meat and the noose that probably killed it. Late one Sunday afternoon, Grandpa killed a large water moccasin that had cornered us boys by the pier. He used a fence post to crush its head and we went up to the house for Granny’s southern fried chicken dinner. To this day, I have never met a plate of fried chicken and okra I did not relish, with memories of Granny’s fresh hot biscuits on the side and her signature fig preserves and mayhaw jelly. We fought for the lemon rinds.

My brother Ken with my mother, fishin' on the bayou.

Grandpa had a huge row boat which we sometimes used for fishing. Otherwise we fished from the piers Grandpa built with his own hands. There was a large oak tree in the Dickinson front yard. At night we'd climb up as high as we could go and watch the refinery fires flaming on the Texas City skyline. The Humble Oil Company had a gas well on the bayou property. And it was pronounced ‘Umble.’

The Arthurs, Winnie (aka Ethelwyn) and Cueball (aka Stuart aka Father) came to Dallas from Britain. Winnie (never grandmother or granny) was born in Edinburgh, but she grew up in Stow, a small village in the Scottish Borders. It was a region of many battles between the English and the Scots and perhaps foreshadowed the senior Arthur marriage. Winnie was proud of her Scottish heritage and spent a great deal of effort trying to convince us we enjoyed an exclusive membership in the Royal Stuart clan; as in Mary Stuart, asin Mary Queen of Scots. In truth anyone could purchase the Stuart tartan mufflers and ties for Christmas; hunting green, dress white and royal red. We had all three and we happily bought into the myth because our middle name was Stuart.

My Grandfather (Cueball) age 18 with his parents.

Cue Ball (John Felstead Stuart Arthur) was born in Haworth, West Yorkshire; a tiny hamlet on the English moors. He was the son of the Reverend David Stuart Arthur whose name I inherited, but without his religious fervor. Cue Ball grew up in the manse of the Baptist Church on West Lane where his father preached for more than 25 years.

That was Bronte country, as in Charlotte and Emily; as in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, as in Heathcliff and Penistone Crags. The Bronte sisters were born, lived and died in their father’s own parsonage, which was also in Haworth. In Charlotte’s words, Haworth was ‘a strange uncivilized little place’. I have never been there. I will probably never go.

Cueball with the Hurst Sisters. Dolly left, wife Winnie right.

Cue Ball served as a Captain in the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War; officially the 49th West Riding Brigade, West Yorkshire Regiment, R.F.A. ‘Was you there Charlie?’ he would sometimes proclaim without warning, harkening back to the days and the men who were actually there with him on the Western Front. My grandfather had a Wilkinson steel saber which could be bent almost double and spring back perfectly formed, a Webley revolver with Sam Brown belt, a riding crop and a set of shattered nerves to show for his commitment to King and country. He was a mounted officer and had learned to shoot his double action pistol at a full gallop, which he would often demonstrate for us after a few drinks and a bit of encouragement. But only after we had twice confirmed an empty cylinder! Cue Ball would then target the Hurst sisters; his wife and sister-in-law Dolly (two ancient crones perched on the settee) and he would fire away. Two clicks each. Then it was time for another Scotch.

Having survived the war and perhaps a bit nostalgic and forgetful of the horrors, Cue Ball collected toy soldiers. His hands shook terribly when he tried to arrange them. His infatuation with the miniatures explains our own large collection of Britain’s Ltd. lead soldiers growing up, many condemned to missing heads or severed arms. War is hell, even for toy soldiers. Once, several antique swords arrived mysteriously from England where my grandparents were visiting the relations, with stern warnings against using them on each other. So why had they been sent to us in the first place? By then we had another brother, Bruce Smedes (not Stuart) Arthur. But he got the tartans just the same.

The Arthurs had come to America looking for opportunity and America was looking for professionals like my grandfather. He was a chartered accountant and would achieve his American Dream, ultimately rising to head the Dallas branch of a firm called Lybrand, Ross Brothers & Montgomery, originally formed in Britain in 1898. That firm would in time become Coopers & Lybrand. Dad would follow in his father’s footsteps, assuming the position of Partner in Charge of the Southwest for C&L and would one day fight many of the battles his father’s legacy had set in motion. I learned by observation that life’s accomplishments did not come easily and that surviving (much less winning) often demanded great personal sacrifice and perseverance.

Me in the gardenias with plastic sword and shield.

Winnie and Cue Ball lived on Turtle Creek Boulevard, not far from today’s chic Mansion Hotel. Those were Old Dallas stomping grounds; the Dallas of the 20’s and 30’s and 40’s. The Arthur manse on Turtle Creek was a two story brick affair with a grand divided staircase, a carriage house over the garage, a kitchen-call bell pad under the dining room table, and a sunny morning room where my grandfather would go to smoke his Lucky Strikes. It also came with rumors of a murdered maid in the backyard garden, where Cue Ball would go to sneak his cigarettes after being forbidden to do so. Other stories accrued with the Turtle Creek property, of bath tub gin parties and an infidelity with an infamous local theater diva. Intoxicated guests sometimes spent the night in the gardenia bushes. One gentleman (whose name I forget) when suitably self-medicated would remove the front seat from his roadster and drive 25 miles south to his home in Waxahachie peering between the steering wheel and the dash board. We never heard the story about how Cue Ball got his nickname. No one seemed to know. Curiously, one night about seven months before JFK’s assassination, one L. H. Oswald took a shot at General Edwin A. Walker who by then occupied the house on Turtle Creek. It was a house of mysteries and many memories. In a manner of speaking, it was our Wuthering Heights.

Up in the mornin' and out to schoolThe teacher is teachin' the golden rule...

I attended public school for the most part, although my junior high years were spent in a private Episcopal school. However, my poor grades didn’t cut it for my Dad, who considered the high price for my lackof education not worth his investment. Public high school brought better grades, a street savvy education (fights in the gym, testosterone and hotrods) and a pleasant side benefit, pretty girls in class. A more than equitable compromise I reasoned. By then, I Wanna Hold Your Hand was being over-dubbed by Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? I played in a garage band. We called ourselves the Lynx, after our Vox guitars. (Pretty cool. Visit themhere. Then come back.)We dressed like mods but we were wannabe rockers and covered the Stones (and Chuck Berry). Teenage mixed metaphors with short hair and Beatle boots. I can't get no...No-No-N-No!

Three Golds and Highpoint Honors Junior Olympics.

Competition bling.

From the age of 8, I competed in swimming. By the tenth grade I had earned statewide and Junior Olympics championships for my age group in many events, many times. By graduation I achieved High School All American status in the Freestyle sprints and All State recognition for multiple events. I do not offer this out of boastfulness. Swimming was the major focus of my young life and like all sports, it demanded hard work, sacrifice and sometimes suffering in order to excel. I learned many lessons I still carry with me.

When you flip your final turn behind and still win the race...you learn something.

When I was 17, it was a very good year.

The summer after my senior year at age 17, I topped the award’s platform as the Texas Open Champion and new State Record holder in two events, having bested several past and future Olympians in the process. For one brief moment I was the fastest human alive on planet Texas. At least in the water, in two events. Little did I know, that was as high as I would rise up the pantheon of my sport.

I would go on to compete in college at SMU on an athletic scholarship, earning All American status as a freshman leading off our free relay at the NCAA's and lettering all four years as we repeatedly swept the Southwest Conference Championships. I went to the summer Nationals again in 1970, but in the age before true sports medicine, injuries and spine problems would eventually prevent me from excelling at the national level. I realized then that swimming was not the end game. It was merely preparation for the main event. I was a good student in college, Dean's list and better; but realistically my years of training and my parents' unbending support and high expectations are largely responsible for everything I have been able to accomplish, great or small.

Mom and Dad

Mother at Rice. Oh, fiddle-dee-dee.

My mother Marian Smedes was born and raised in Houston and attended Rice University, where she majored in French, German and Italian. Mother served as Vice-President of the student council, President of Pi Delta Phi, the French honor society, as well as President of Les Hiboux (the Owls) French language society, all in one school year; 1938-39. While language may have been her major, music was her passion and she became an accomplished pianist and even aspired to become a song writer, although she did not. Never the wall flower, Mother was a popular and radiantly beautiful young woman, and was chosen as Rice’s representative to the Sugar Bowl of 1939.

Dad sailing on Galveston Bay. Avast Mr. Starbuck.

My Dad, John Kenneth Stuart Arthur (JKS to his friends), was born in London and brought to Dallas shortly thereafter. He attended Terrell Prep, where he was a good student and an accomplished golfer, winning the Dallas City Championship. He ran track and threw the javelin with which he once inadvertently pinned a team mate to the turf Homerian style – through the heel. With movie star good looks, Dad also attended Rice before the war where he was voted King of the May Fete and named editor of the Campanile, the Rice Yearbook. He met my mother. They were married. And Dad went off to kill Nazis in Europe. He served as an artillery Captain with the Blackhawks of the 86th infantry division and commanded the firing of their 105mm Howitzer canons. After the German surrender, he was sent to the Philippines to kill Japanese, but the Japs surrendered before he got there. So Dad was an MP for a while and then he came home. He brought with him a shredded German tank flag, an army pup tent, a bayonet with hard sheath, his dented canteen, a small canvas pack, a shovel used to dig fox holes (by him and by us) and several woolen caps with Captain’s bars. But he never spoke about it. We never asked. Dad attended Harvard after the war and then went to work for his father and the firm. He would rise to the top and he would pay for his success.

Throughout their marriage, my parents had but one objective; building the future for their sons. While Mother was the rock, Dad was the oracle; a great source of wisdom and inspiration, in my life at least. I had watched his struggles and he had not ignored mine. He gave me three pieces of advice which I took to heart. The first was, what you do in practice, you will do in competition. Loosely translated, flip all your turns, touch the wall legally, take no shortcuts. The second was more of an observation. You can (should - will - must) never work for someone else. He knew me and what I would and could not tolerate. The other bit of insight was pursue your dreams.

Dad and the boys at my wedding. Acapulco formal in Dallas.

As a business man at the top of his profession, under assault by the company he (and his father) had helped to build in both profit and prestige, he granted his three sons total freedom to chart their own unique course in life. One became an architect, another a writer and film maker, the third a salesman. Sadly, Dad would not live to see how it all turned out.

I began my professional journey in the early 70’s as a documentary film maker for PBS - $5,000 per annum - with a business undergraduate degree and a Masters in Fine Arts.

The Long and Winding Road

With my beautiful bride. But not at the Oscars!

In the mid ’70s, my wife Ruth and I moved to Los Angeles. I wanted to be a screenwriter. I published my first novel, The Oasis Project in 1980. Perhaps the best thing my father ever said to me having read my manuscript was ‘you can write!’ (Thanks Dad. Tell that to Tinsel Town.)

In the early '80s, having failed to achieve fame and fortune in Hollywood and with no real prospects, we returned to Dallas where we would in time build a successful media production company.
For twenty-five years I worked closely with Frito-Lay and the other divisions of PepsiCo; becoming in time Frito-Lay's defacto historian and ambassador of the entrepreneurial spirit. During these challenging and rewarding years, I produced and directed hundreds of film and digital video projects, created and staged meetings and theatrical performances, and conjured elaborate multi-media events, all designed to inspire and motivate company financial performance. I feel lucky to haved worked with a world class company and world class people, to have been there when records were set and dreams were achieved, in sales, marketing and operations excellence.

I have not acted alone. There have been many loyal clients, trusted collaborators and skilled suppliers and technicians who supported me. And my wife has been my partner and faithful companion throughout.

You and I have memoriesLonger than the roadThat stretches out ahead... - Lennon/McCartney